Just six months into his tenure, US Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Paul Atkins is aready in the weeds on a number of issues, but he indicated a bigger-picture goal: to straighten the regulator’s long-term path.
“We want to future-proof what we do,” Atkins said Thursday at the Security Traders Association’s Market Structure Conference in Washington, DC. “We don’t want to see ping pong with changing administrations and changing rules.”
Indeed there has been ping pong over the years. Changeovers between Democrat and Republican US Presidents typically result in a new SEC head, with concurrent wholesale changes in regulatory approach.
Much of former SEC Chair Gary Gensler’s unfinished rulemaking agenda was unceremoniously scrapped shortly after he stepped down earlier this year.
Atkins didn’t provide specifics as to how he plans to future-proof the SEC.
Aside from that long-term goal, there are a host of narrower issues that Atkins is tending to. He indicated that “job one” is addressing Rule 611, the order protection rule, which was adopted in 2005. A long-time critic of the rule, Atkins said the OPR would be more accurately called the “order discrimination rule” for the distortions it has created in the market.
Atkins said securities markets most likely will look very different within five to 10 years, as digital assets and tokenization evolve. To that end, he said he wants the SEC to lean in to the future and be known as the “Securities and Innovation Commission”.
The SEC Chairman acknowledged that the SEC hasn’t worked well with its sister regulator, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and the “no man’s land” between the agencies is “littered with corpses of would-be products that make sense,” such as portfolio margining and single-stock futures.
Animosity between the two agencies has been a drag on the functioning of markets, and Atkins said that is now changing with a newly harmonized approach.
Atkins also cited the decline in initial public offerings, which he attributed to litigation risk, cost, and the “weaponization of corporate governance.” He want to change rules to make public markets more attractive for private companies.
Overall, the SEC “needs a spring cleaning of the attic, basement and garage, to make rules productive and not redundant,” Atkins said.
